2'54 JOURNAL^ BOMBAY NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY, Vol. XIV. 



ax^ diplazoid ; and this is evident also on some of Gamble's specimens and on 

 a specimen from Sikkim in Kew, Hook fiL Some of Wallich's Nepal speci- 

 mens differ from the Mussooree plant (and from each other) : others are identical. 



Mr. Baker, at p. 489, Syn. lal., 2nd. Ed., under A. imlrosiim J. Sm., 

 says A. [Dipl). Grifithii, No. 245, is perhaps a variety. I think there is not 

 the slightest doubt that A. GriffitMl, Baker,is identical with A. miilticawlatwn, 

 "Wall. I have not myself gathered A. Griffitldi, but there is abundant mate- 

 rial in Kew from wliich a conclusion can be arrived at. On several sheets {ex 

 Herb. Hort. Bot., Calc.) of specimens collected by him in the Darjiling Dis- 

 trict at low elevations, his Nos. 9006 and 9079, 1869, Mr. Clarke has written, 

 " Root-stock creeping extensively and throwing up solitary fronds : sori few, 

 scattered, and few of these diplazoid." These are exactly the Mussooree plant, 

 which is certainly Wallich's A. multkcmdatum. On one sheet of this series, 

 ticketed " A. GriffitMi, Baker, Risliap, 3000', Darjiling, 4-9-69, No. 9006, " 

 and named finally by Mr. Clarke, on 11-1-79, A. miiUicaudatum^ Wall., Mr. 

 Baker has pencilled " Madeiran umbrosum. " He has also pinned on this sheet 

 a paper as follows : — " Clarke, Nov. 1875, seems to distinguish. 



" 1 Common species is (has ?) AUantodioid sori. 



" Another sere (series ?) of similar structure, but white and with a scabrous 

 stem and rhachis, appears to be A. umbrosum, J. Sm., but very unlike A. auitrale, 



" Ausirah, Brack,, from Thwaites — not Bengal, at all. 



'' Bengal fern which Dr. King and others call A. austrde is for me 

 D. Jerdoni, or GriffitUi (I think the former). These two have creeping 

 rhizomes which send up distant solitary fronds, the stipe rising through the earth." 



I consider it quite a mistake to put this fern under Athyrium umbrosum^ a 

 Madeira fern, which is quite different in shape of frond, as well as of sorus 

 and involucre — not to speak of rhizome. Specimens of A. umbrosum in 

 herbaria are generally incomplete, and the descriptions say nothing as to the 

 nature of the caudex ; but in a privately printed account of '* An Easter Holiday 

 in Gran Canaria and Madeira", 1893, written by one whom I know to be a 

 keen observer and collector, I find this allusion to the plant — from which I 

 gather that it is subarborescent, and must have a stout erect caudex: — "At 

 one waterfall " (in the Levada dofurado) " I noticed Asplemium umbrosum seven 

 feet in length and as thick as a miniature tree." The young plants growing in 

 the Kew houses have fronds in tufts, and certainly no creeping sarmentum. A, 

 umbrosum has always, I think, an ovate or lanceolate frond : A. midticauda- 

 tum — a subdeltoid frond, with the lowest pair of pinnte sometimes hardly less 

 thm the next above which are the longest. The involucres of ^. umbrosum are 

 described by Hooker and Baker as being '' large, tumid, membranous." Those 

 of A. midticaudatum. are very small and nai'row, so far as is visible. Beddome 



